The Magic of Tidying Up

My mother, the queen of clean, could compete with Martha Stewart herself in keeping a tidy home. I think she would agree that tidying up has a sort of magic all its own. In fact, I believe that one reason I always have a great time at her house is that it is neat and clean and negativity has been swept away with her various cleaning products. Although my mom is pretty extreme in her cleaning, I do think most of us could agree that clutter and mess can seem very overwhelming and increases stress and anxiety for many people. It is not uncommon in this modern world to live under the stressful burden of too many material things which becomes an unmanageable mess. Most of us could stand a bit of cleaning and purging! From a magical standpoint, cleaning has great benefit for the energy of the home and our own mental state.

In the book Magickal Self Defense, Kerr Cuhulain advises,

“Negative thought-forms accumulate in messy environments. An organized household fosters an organized mind. An organized mind is much more capable of defense than a disorganized mind. You do more than just emptying the garbage pail when you take out the trash.”

Do cluttered environments lower our defenses? I think they do. In fact, I think they weigh us down and cause needless anxiety. I have found that tidying the home releases these negative thought-forms and wards our home against negativity. If the benefits of being tidy are so great, then the only question should be how to achieve a neat, organized home that stays that way.

I have read many books on organizing everything from socks to tools but few really stand up to close scrutiny. Most home organizing books really rely on moving “stuff” from one place to another which isn’t really very tidy in the end. Along comes the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo which promises if you follow her method, you will never have to organize your home again. Kondo’s clients are in Tokyo primarily and have limited space to work with but the lessons are sound advice to the “stuff” loving culture of the West as well. Some of the best lessons from her book are as follows:

1. Ask yourself if your belongings “spark joy” in your life. If they don’t, you need to donate, gift, or trash them. I often wonder if this also goes for husbands (or wives)? If it doesn’t, I definitely think it should, but I digress…All the items in your home with some limitations, like tax returns, should bring joy to you. If you surround yourself with joy, your life changes.

2. Organize by category not room. Clothing is the first thing to organize in this book. All your clothing, in the entire house. Get done with the first category before going on to the second, which is books by the way.

3. Fold don’t hang when possible. Folding takes up less space anyway. Also, the correct way to put folded clothing in a drawer is vertically. Clothing stacked in drawers gets crushed an wrinkled and you can’t see all your clothing at once and have to resort to digging through your clothes.

4. Organizers are for hoarders. Complex organizing systems for closets, under beds, etc. are used to put away more stuff that you really don’t need anyway.

The magic of this book is that you become able to part with things that don’t make you happy and surround yourself with things you love. The book treats your clothing as entities which have feelings. This seems strange at first until you start looking at the state of your drawers. My clothes were dreadfully unhappy! The magic of tidying your home with a ruthless purging is bound to be life-changing. Which reminds me, I am barely on the category of books…

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One Comment on “The Magic of Tidying Up”

This is so true! I was feeling unhappy and my magick was not at its best and could not figure out why. After I tidied up and did some floor washes, the entire energy of the room lifted, and me along with it!